Wendy Lloyd, Lent 2021
We give thanks for the tireless carers except they aren’t tireless anything but - and yet they have kept going at great cost to themselves, saving lives. God who cares, thank you for all carers, strengthen them in their innermost being. We bow hearts and heads with sadness for the many loved ones who have died from or because of Covid-19 tears fall with the memories of absence, of too many final moments spent apart. God of all comfort, bring peace. We lament with frustration the early indecision and poor judgement of leadership and the inequalities and injustices exposed and amplified by this pandemic. Can things be different when we emerge from this? How long, O Lord, how long? There are many worries calling for our attention, Lord, the effects of covid, long covid, vaccines and variants, the loss of education, employment and livelihoods. Help us to listen instead to your calming words, to consider the lilies, how they grow. Can any of us by worrying add a single hour to our span of life? We remember how it felt at the beginning, almost novel, a new normal, a disrupted routine, we even talked about building back better, but optimism was replaced with repetitive realism, premature pondering was silenced by another wave. Awaken our imagination again to new possibilities, O God. We reflect on the difficulties of staying at home of struggling with working conditions and online meeting fatigue, with the demands of homeschooling, with being lonely, isolated, just longing for a hug, or being confined and overcrowded or living with domestic abuse. Liberating God, grant us all safe release within and from lockdown. And in the midst of all these challenges we celebrate with wonder and awe the incredible feats of science, of vaccines created in less than a year, amazed by the potential of human ingenuity. Thanks be to God for the brilliant dedication of scientists. We chose to hope and work for another day when the lessons learnt through this year will become part of the fabric of our society that we will always look out for one another coming together to ensure no-one is left behind and never again get so busy that we fail to notice nature. God who makes all things new who has been with us during this long Covid-19 year, guide us on to a new future, a new day, to your new creation - lead us through and beyond this wilderness. Amen.
